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Unable to move message to Trash

I have two email accounts on my iPhone: a gmail account and an exchange account. The gmail account is the default account.


On Wednesday, I deleted 3 emails from my PC on the exchange account that weren't deleted from my phone. I deleted numerous other emails before and since from my PC that correctly deleted from my phone, also.


I have tried to delete these messages from my phone, but I get an error message: Unable to Move Message - The message could not be moved to the mailbox Trash.


I've read several solutions on the web, but they all tell me to go to Settings/Mail/click on the Exchange account/click on the Account address/click on Advanced. There is no Advanced button in the Exchange account in Settings. The Advanced button does show up in the gmail (default) account.


Thanks in advance for your help.

iPhone 4, iOS 5

Posted on Jun 9, 2012 4:09 AM

Reply
58 replies

Jan 24, 2017 3:04 AM in response to branch155

All previous answers did not work for me.

I have gsuite / google apps paid account since that provides push mail.

So none of the imap answers are very useful.


What did help was

https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/138740?hl=en

and specifically going to

http://m.google.com/sync/settings

in your iOS device' browser.


That brings up a (unknown) mobile sync settings menu that is, well, very well hidden.

Tick the second checkbox Enable "Delete Email As Trash" for this device to on.

Click save.


Do this per device where this email account is used.


To clear the local mail cache, go to settings / mail / your gsuite account.

delete the account.

When done, reboot the iOS device.

After reboot, go to settings / mail / add account.

Add the gsuite / google apps account by selecting EXCHANGE (see help page above).

Add m.google.com as the server.

User is your full email address.

check your email / calendar / contacts / notes preferred settings.


And all should be fine again.

Jan 24, 2017 3:33 PM in response to branch155

I had a similar problem on my 2014 Air running El Capitan. The offending email was on an Exchange account. It also shows up on my iOS devices (running 8 & 9, respectively.)

I had tried the "mark as unread" solution before reading this thread. I'm glad it worked for so many, but it didn't work for me.

I also tried just turning the account off and then back on. That didn't work.

My third try was going onto the webmail version of my Exchange account and deleting it there. That didn't work either. (Interestingly, I did find on the webmail site 14 different copies of the single email I'd been trying to delete. I did delete them all from the website, but the offending email still showed up in my Apple Mail.)

My fourth try was the suggestion made in this thread to delete the Exchange account and then re-create it.

That one has worked on both my Air and my iOS 9 device; haven't checked the 8.

Thanks for the suggestion

Aug 7, 2012 8:02 AM in response to kentiler

I was trying to post to this subject but all I could see was reply. I am getting "unable to move messages to trash" and i have tried everything, deleting the account, checking and unchecking trash folder in advanced settings, typing INBOX on the smtp. This is a new problem and nothing helps. Any other suggestions?

Aug 8, 2012 2:16 PM in response to branch155

Try this (it worked for a customer of mine)


in the emai "Mailboxes" screen (open "email" and keep clicking the back link on the top left of the screen until you get there) you should see your email address(es) under the "Inboxes" title at the top. Below that you'll see the heading "Accounts". You should see the same email accounts as above, but with a different symble on the left. Click on the account that you are unable to delete from. On the top of the page, you should see "Mailboxes" on the left, the account name in the middle, and "edit" on the right. You should also see a list of folders down the page, including "Inbox", "Sent", "Trash", etc. If you see more than 1 "Trash", click it and see if there is a folder inside it called "Error". If this is the case, click "Edit" (top right), click the "Error" folder, and you should see an option to "Delete Mailbox". Click this, and it should warn you that deleting the mailbox "Trash" will delete all messages in it. Continue. Go back and try to delete your unwanted mail. If it still doesn't work, at your own risk, delete the other "Trash" folder (the one that isn't a picture of a trash can). So far, that is what we had to do, and it all seems to work now.


Hope this works for you also!

Aug 13, 2012 2:14 PM in response to branch155

There was an exchange server interruption and it orphaned a bunch of e-mails in my Iphone exchange inbox (they were gone from my PC inbox/trash folders). I could not delete them out of my Iphone Inbox. To remove them I did 3 steps (not sure which one did it) Set my Iphone email account to "Mail days to sync" to only 1 day. On my PC I preformed an outlook send/recieve all. Then on my Iphone mailboxes --> accounts I went to the exchange --> Inbox then selected the edit button. Selected the messages that won't delete, then selected the mark button and answered "Mark as Unread" and the messages dissappeared.

May 2, 2013 5:35 AM in response to SilentMountain

I was also helpend by OctoberGuy, thanks!

I had been staring at a couple of old inbox mails for months and had replied twice to a mail by accident once already.


To help others in the discussion:

There are DIFFERENT problems with not being able to delete mails from your iPad / iPhone:


- One is for IMAP mail accounts, fe Google.

This can be solved with the mailbox trash settings in advanced mail account settings as mentioned above.


- The other one is mails that remain in the inbox for Microsoft Exchange mail accounts.

(The trash setting is not even available for this type of account)

The simple solution is to edit the mail list and mark the offending mails as (un)read.

After that, they wil magically disappear, as well they should!


Cheers,

Richard

Unable to move message to Trash

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